504s... ah, fun.

Well, I just had my 504 meeting for this year. If you don't know what they are, they are basically meetings for people in schools (kids/teens) to make sure their teachers know about medical problems. And the teachers sign a form saying that they will allow any accommodations that are necessary. All of my teachers this year are very nice and have complied, and I would like to congratulate Mr. F (rest of name withheld for privacy) for being the first member of the PE department to ever have come to one of my 504 meetings that I know of. *claps for him and hands him invisible congratulatory certificate*. He teaches driver's ed and I will only have him for one quarter, but still--he came. That's good.

What is bad is that, during 3rd and 4th quarters, I will have the head of the PE dept. as one of my PE teachers. And she isn't very agreeable. She was the one who, last year, made a policy that gym teachers should not carry around student's inhalers or glucose tablets (basically, "sugar pills" for if someone like me gets a low blood sugar and needs sugar fast. They taste slightly better than conversation hearts *gags thinking about it* (sorry if you actually DO like conversation hearts, but then you're kinda crazy in my opinion. No offense!)) I received news of this by a pink sheet of paper onto which the email had been printed that my (very nice and now retired) gym teacher handed me along with my glucose tabs. I carry my own inhaler in my purse, so the gym teachers don't have to be burdened by it. *cough* Anyway, this was against the 504 for last year. My future gym teacher has already broken my 504 once (heads of departments are bound by it, too, FYI hinthint PE dept) and I am pretty sure she will complain about having to go out of her way by carrying my glucose tabs around (the tube they're in is smaller than a toilet paper tube!!!). My mom has numbers of lawyers who have connections to ADA (American Diabetes Association) (you wouldn't believe how many organizations have that acronym... we need to talk to the *nonexistent* (as far as I know) AAAAA about that (American Association Against Acronym Abuse) although I would hate to have to go to court about this. But this isn't just about my rights. This is about the rights of everyone who goes to school and has a 504 or medical problems or something. So I guess I'd be fighting for the rights of a lot of people. These are federal laws that are being broken.

Anyway, I think I am going to go study up on those laws. I'd like to print out a hard copy so that, if I get a gym-teacher-can't-carry-your-glucose-tablets email printout again, I can go straight to the source, pull the laws out of my purse (which goes with me everywhere... I run laps wearing it, and play pretty much all run-around-until-exhaustion sports like soccer and volleycross with it on) and show whoever is violating my rights whatever they are doing wrong. Maybe that would get me enough attention in the eyes of the law, or school, or whoever to get this stuff fixed. This involves everyone who has medical problems and everyone who has to deal with those with medical problems. Those with medical problems will always be with us (especially for those of us with medical problems... heh), so this really needs to be cracked down on it. So if something comes out of this, great. If I am martyred in the process, figuratively or literally, fine. God gave me diabetes, asthma, crazy amounts of allergies, hypothyroidism, and *thinks hard* anything else I have that I may have missed or may not have been diagnosed yet (knee problems, possibly!) for a reason. It might be this, but I will pray about it before doing anything drastic. (At least I don't have PE for a while...)

Anyway, knowing the law never hurts, so I'm gonna go look it up.